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1375 Review
58 Karma

Review on πŸ–¨ Lexmark Color Jetprinter 1100 by Kenny Marozas

Revainrating 1 out of 5

Random Acts of Paper Violence

I bought this printer three years ago because of a pricing mistake that made it incredibly cheap - one of those times when the manager said 'okay give it one but fix it him this sticker INSTANTLY. I can't believe anyone paid anything close to selling price for it and didn't take it back. Even I had to ask for a refund. First, it rarely ran directly under Windows Me - the software running it ran in the system tray and would annoy me by popping up and yelling "PRINTING STARTED!" at me in .WAV format, unless I turned down the volume . Then printing a page - at any resolution - would almost bring my system to its knees. I think I can blame the poor quality of Windows Me for that. But there is something else. The Lexmark 1100 came at a time when cartridge prices were rising, often above the cost of a printer, and these cartridges were cool even at a low price. Sam's club. The fact that it burned the ink faster than any other printer I've owned, even on low draft quality, didn't bode well. In 6 months I spent about $120 on ink (two cartridges), mostly regular printing and just a few photos. Then one day the 1100 just stopped printing properly - random green streaks and specks of other colors covering huge chunks of the page, despite replacing the cartridge and cleaning/aligning the print nozzle and printheads. As soon as I could afford it, I put it away and bought a new HP. I recently needed this unsaleable item and retrieved it. This reminded me of other problems inherent in hardware. When you load a page, no matter how hard you try, it will always shift left and then right again, zigzagging it into place and increasing the chances of your page being garbled. Sometimes it would load automatically and not realize the page was loading so I had to fetch the page and try again. It also pulls out two or even three sheets at a time, wasting paper and ruining the next page feed. I've avoided Lexmark products completely since I bought it. It's the most frustrating, poorly built and poorly maintained (sometimes it takes 1000 drivers to make it work) hardware this side of CueCat.

Pros
  • Regular Price
Cons
  • Not Bad